The present disclosure relates generally to information handling systems, and more particularly to responding to faults in stack links between information handling systems.
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Networking information handling systems such as, for example, switch devices, are sometimes “stacked” or otherwise connected together in order to provide enhanced functionality. For example, multiple switch devices stacked together may operate as a single, logical switch device that has a port capacity of the sum of the multiple switch devices, and that provides for simplified network administration, resilient connections, networking scaling, and a variety of other benefits. When stacking switch devices, one or more stack ports on each switch device may be coupled to one or more stack ports on at least one other switch device to provide one or more stack links that form an Inter-Switch Link (ISL) between those switch devices. However, in the event a subset of the stack links in an ISL between switch devices fail, that ISL may experience degraded performance, bandwidth, or connectivity. However, devices communicating via those switch devices (e.g., server devices, storage devices, and/or other connected devices known in the art) will be unaware of the degraded ISL, as conventional stacked systems report the ISL as either “up” (i.e., available to transmit communications) or “down” (i.e., unavailable to transmit communications), which may result in a communications failure. To provide a specific example, a conventional stacked system may include a first switch device and a second switch device connected via an ISL with four stack links. If three of the four stack links fail, a server device connected to the first switch device or second switch device will still see the ISL as “up” or otherwise available to transmit communications, even though that ISL performance, bandwidth, or other connectivity may be substantially degraded, which may cause communications sent by that server device to be dropped.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an improved stack link fault response system.